Implementation of Metal Casting Best Practices - EERE - U.S. ...

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J. Aluminum Casting Facility-2 Plant Profile Aluminum Casting Facility-2 is a 200,000 square foot family-owned foundry with a work force of 270 employees; it uses a wide range of aluminum alloys to produce a variety of castings, such as aircraft cylinder heads, boating parts, military equipment, and specialty car parts. The foundry utilizes a variety of casting methods wherein 50% of their production uses green sand, 30% permanent mold, and 20% die casting. Although the two major alloys used for production are A535 and A206, the foundry pours 30 different alloys. Due to the diverse nature of the alloys poured at the facility, it does not use a large central melter but instead employs 42 natural-gasfired crucible furnaces to do its melting. The facility has a full range of heat treating furnaces, quench tanks, and aging ovens. The castings produced at this facility range from ½ pound to 2,000 pounds. The annual aluminum casting shipments from this facility amounts to 4.5 million pounds. Aluminum Casting Facility-2 takes pride in its emphasis on quality. Foundry management is always striving to improve quality and productivity within their manufacturing system. To enhance its competitive position, the foundry focuses its efforts on prevention rather than detection. Implementing and participating in the CMC and Metal Casting R&D efforts has been an important part of this effort. The foundry also employs a variety of tools and techniques to ensure and inspect quality. They model and perform simulations on almost all of their castings using advanced CAD system simulation software. They also check the quality of their castings by using tools that verify dimensional accuracy and by performing tensile testing, spectrographic analysis, real-time and conventional X-ray analysis, and eddy current testing. Onsite Assessment The assessment team’s visit to Aluminum Casting Facility-2 started in the morning with a meeting with the Vice-President of Engineering at the facility. Eppich Technologies and BCS personnel received an overview of the research results the foundry had implemented to date. A unique situation about this visit was that one of the Energy-Saving Melting and Revert Reduction Technology (E-SMARRT) project primary investigators (a project funded by ITP) was performing some trials on site. The assessment team provided facility management with an overview of the tools and services of the ITP BestPractices subprogram. Management had no awareness of the suite of BestPractices tools prior to the assessment team’s visit, although they had heard at a society meeting of the IACs a week prior to the site visit. The facility is the right size to qualify for an IAC assessment, and the assessment team provided them with contact information for the IAC closest to the foundry. 1. Implemented R&D and Best Practices Partnering in DOE Research During the site visit at Aluminum Casting Facility-2, the assessment team observed first-hand the research institution/industrial partnership at work. The foundry was working with researchers 82
from CANMET * on an E-SMARRT project funded by ITP, Light Metals Permanent Mold Castings. The main objectives of this research are to establish the processing parameters for selected prototype automotive, marine and other components during gravity and low-pressure permanent mold casting of Al-Mg alloy 206 and 535. The study set out to determine the microstructure and mechanical properties of these alloys in their as-cast and heat-treated phase to benchmark the casting processes and alloy properties. Currently, A206 and A535 are difficult to cast because they have the propensity to “hot tear” – a crack that forms near the surface of casting prior to the completion of the solidification because of hindered contraction. 63 Despite the propensity to hot tear, A206 has characteristics (i.e., a tensile strength of 60 ksi, elongation of 10%, and a yield of 40 ksi) that make it an ideal alloy for light-weight military applications. A535 has superior corrosion resistance when compared to A335, naturally ages, which makes it ideal for marine products because of the corrosive environments in which they must operate, and does not require heat treating. During the assessment team’s visit, Aluminum Casting Facility-2 and CANMET were working together to develop casting and metallurgical techniques to avoid “hot tearing” concerns with the two alloys using the permanent mold process. The two groups worked together and conducted casting trials with a substantial amount of Titanium (Ti) added. Once the castings cooled, they were visually inspected and no “hot tears” or other visual defects could be found. Even X-ray examination yielded no defects. This was an exciting finding for both Aluminum Casting Facility-2 and the researchers at CANMET, because it contradicted previous rule that said high Ti would cause hot tearing. At the beginning of its research, CANMET was producing simple castings in a lab-controlled environment. Many industry members were skeptical of CANMET’s results because they their results were not obtained from large, complex geometries in an industrial setting. There was a need for industry to get involved, which Aluminum Casting Facility-2 did by allowing CANMET to perform casting trials at its plant. This project is an example of excellent industry-research institution partnership. CANMET would not have been able to progress without the cooperation of Aluminum Casting Facility-2 or a similar facility. With these exciting results, Aluminum Casting Facility-2 now has proof that the subject alloys are viable. This has the potential to open a new product line for the facility. Metal Casting R&D Portfolio Research Results as a Resource Aluminum Casting Facility-2 has benefited from the utilization of the past ITP funded research and has realied it to be a valuable asset for developing marketing material, improving their overall operations, and finding solutions to their waste generation. Facility staff also found AFSearch to be valuable in finding solutions by allowing effcient searches of abstracts of past projects, many of which were funded by ITP. For example, one study, Mechanical Properties – Structure Correlation for Commercial Specification of Cast Particulate Matrix Composites, conducted by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was regarded as particularly helpful in * CANMET is a Canadian government organization focusing on research to develop and deploy new materials and material processing technologies to produce value-added manufactured goods. 83
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Implementation of Metal Casting Bes
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Executive Summary Since 1995 the U.
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summarized comments regarding the t
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• Metal casters must investigate
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F. Iron Foundry-2..................
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As part of this project, an assessm
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1.3 Report Organization This report
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energy needs, primarily to the larg
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As a result of this strategy, ITP h
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All of the facilities that particip
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A number of the facilities visited
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Steel Foundry Aluminum Foundry Alum
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4. Methodology for Assessing Indust
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5. Overall Assessment Observations
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samples and measurements from vario
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the Metalcasting Congress and other
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single in-line memory module (SIMM)
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application can offer tangible bene
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7. Common Energy-Saving Solutions T
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7.4 Installing Radiant Panels in Cr
Page 42 and 43: 7.8 Installing Energy-Efficient Lig
Page 44 and 45: 8. Conclusion The ITP Metal Casting
Page 46 and 47: Appendix A: Plant Assessment Case S
Page 48 and 49: Scrap Rate The scrap rate at the pl
Page 50 and 51: Dross Management Metal dealers and
Page 52 and 53: B. Die Casting Plant-2 Plant Profil
Page 54 and 55: Quality Control The assessment team
Page 56 and 57: C. Steel Foundry-1 Plant Profile St
Page 58 and 59: also enables foundries to understan
Page 60 and 61: Automated Molding Line Steel Foundr
Page 62 and 63: D. Steel Foundry-2 Plant Profile St
Page 64 and 65: subsequent machining operations. Ex
Page 66 and 67: motor, with an older piece of equip
Page 68 and 69: 1. Implemented Best Practices Age S
Page 70 and 71: Treating Sand Iron Foundry-1 reclai
Page 72 and 73: F. Iron Foundry-2 Plant Profile Iro
Page 74 and 75: Working with the Utility Iron Found
Page 76 and 77: G. Lost Foam Foundry-1 Plant Profil
Page 78 and 79: work yielded a 0.85% reduction in s
Page 80 and 81: Stack Melter Like many plants melti
Page 82 and 83: tools. Like many of the other facil
Page 84 and 85: will require that the facility have
Page 86 and 87: 1. Implemented R&D and Best Practic
Page 88 and 89: V-6 blocks, the gating system was c
Page 90 and 91: During their site visit, the team f
Page 94 and 95: promoting a product line for the fa
Page 96 and 97: Another alternative for the facilit
Page 98 and 99: K. Copper Foundry-1 Plant Profile C
Page 100 and 101: The facility also stays abreast of
Page 102 and 103: Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) - A stee
Page 104 and 105: Sprue - Metal that fills the conica
Page 106 and 107: 23 Stratecast, Inc. AFS Metalcastin
Page 108: 99 Ibid. pg. 335. 100 http://www.go
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